A Night at the football

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good evening,

let me firstly start with the score :

Universidad de Chile 0 Universidad Catolica 2

I mention this at the start for a reason. Those who knew me from days of going to watch Celtic, were always aware that if there was an early goal at the game, I would have missed it. This was down to always leaving the pub too late !!! This evening was the reverse. To avoid any crush and trouble after the game, we legged it with 5 minutes to go, and guess what ????? We missed the second goal scored in the last minute !!!!

Anyway, we arrived at the ground early to find our seats. Watching football in Chile is interesting. Your ticket provides the row and number of your seat, but not the gate number to enter through. We had to ask a few helpful men with sub-machine guns who pointed us in the right direction. To be honest we would have gone wherever they directed as we had forgotten to arm ourselves before leaving the flat.

When we bought the tickets, the only ones on sale were for the Chile fans. The tickets also had the logo of the Chile team printed on them. The tickets for Catolica went on sale two days later. All things considered, I felt it was safe to assume we would be amongst the Chile supporters. Sadly, I had forgotten that in South America, nothing means anything, and anything means twice the reverse of your previous thought. Indeed, we found ourselves in the Catolica section.

After a brief discourse with two security guards who did not have the remotest clue what I was talking about, and a police captain who thought it was quite funny, we sat down. Alone. With not a soul within 30 yards of us. Perhaps the Catolica fans would turn up later I thought. To our left a seething mass of Chile fans were jumping up and down, singing and chanting, letting off flares and generally having a hell of a good time. We sat in silence, still alone.

I had the notion that near kick off, we would move in amongst the Catolica fans who had bothered to turn up. Even when the game started, it appeared that only half their allocation had been sold. With that in mind, we transferred into the Chile section, via our friendly police captain who asked if we had seen the light !!! If he had not been carrying a side weapon, I would have had Wendy thump him.

The other interesting fact about going to football in Chile, is that although you have a seat in a particular row allocated, that means nothing. You sit where you want and everyone else does the same. Makes for great South American chaos !!!

For the game. Chile had most possession, missed several chances, hit the post, while Catolica had two chances and took them both. While I was observing detail to include here, Wendy helped by pointing out that number 14 was wearing gloves, one player on the other team had a ponytail and that the referee and linesmen were wearing pink tops. I cannot match that input.

A great night though.

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Comments

[christine]

scottish football
I don't think that the crowd segregation you had in Santiago would work at an Old Firm match!!